


The Shard and the Wanderer

by EtchCantrellorLightningHeterodyne



Category: Sharp Zero (Webcomic)
Genre: And like, But it's not their job to fix each other and they know it, F/F, Family Wholesomeness, I feel like reading minds will mess you up?, Jesus Fuck I need to stop using so many tags, Like just having the ability will, Like people r gonna get beat up, Tanis fought a space war, The warning is kind of a just in case more than anything else, and Natia has probs just had to put up with bullshit, and idk how detailed my descriptions of injury will get, and probs has to put up with additional bullshit, because her job is arguing with aliens, but like, they're both kinda fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2020-11-08 01:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20827286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtchCantrellorLightningHeterodyne/pseuds/EtchCantrellorLightningHeterodyne
Summary: Or: Tanis comes out of the Regdin War twisted and broken and reforged to the point where she’s not sure what she was before. Natia wanders into other people’s lives until she can’t tell where her mind ends. A cracked soldier and a lost explorer split a glass of cheap whiskey. It doesn’t end there.





	1. Chapter 1

Tanis hadn’t  _ meant _ to wind up a superhero. Really. It was, well and truly, one of the last fucking things she wanted to do with her life. But here she was, waiting to see if whoever ran this utter shitshow would add her act to it. 

“I’m not sure why you applied if you hate the thought so much,” someone murmured as they sat down next to her (not next to Zipper, who was currently all but buried in her left side and most definitely hiding under her coat and probably also asleep).

Tanis didn’t bother opening her eye. There was only one other person who would be waiting outside Mission Control’s main office.

“Heard you were a physicist at NASA,” the thirty one year old former soldier murmured.

“I didn’t have any part in the ships you commanded. My name’s Natia Collins.”

At that, Tanis cracked a small smile. Granted, her smiles tended to be mirthless, bitter, and generally very telling of the fact that the war she’d fought had ended very abruptly about two years ago along with the lives of all her friends, but it was a smile anyway, and it was fucking progress, dammit. All her friends were dead. Nobody expected her to be happy.

A small bundle snuggled closer into her side, likely out of Natia’s sight.

_ Well, _ she thought.  _ Not all of them _ .

Zipper was… interesting. And… she’d kind of adopted him. Which she hadn’t really meant to do. But he was like. Four. Or eightish, in his years. And alone. And had completely saved her ass and her entire planet. So.

_ I keep doing things I don’t mean to do and regretting them horribly later _ .

“I can read minds,” Natia blurted, and Tanis’ back went ramrod straight as she mentally went through every swear she’d learned during her years with Iffrene and Cyprin.

Iffrene and Cyprin. 

God, she missed them.

Tanis turned to the woman next to her, putting a protective arm around Zipper’s shoulders without even really noticing.

She wasn’t expecting her to be tall. Or buff. Or really,  _ really _ ,  _ unfairly _ hot.

Or… blind.

“How-”

“Better voice to text interface than Siri will ever give you,” Natia said, a very faint and very pretty smile curling the corners of her lips. “And I’m flattered, thank you.”

Tanis blinked.

“Flattered by what?”

“The fact that you think I’m gorgeous.”

The soldier froze, registering little more than her unintentionally adopted alien child clutching at her shirt and the now-familiar feeling of former rigid truths of her life catching fire and falling apart.

“Well, shit.”

Natia turned to face her (she was  _ tall _ , holy  _ shit _ ), a Mona Lisa smile on her face, and bemusedly waved at Zipper (who hid in Tanis’ coat again).

“You’re taking this better than most people,” Natia said. “What’s his name?”

“Thanks? And he can introduce himself when he’s comfortable doing it.”

It was another hour of easy conversation, of Tanis getting used to Natia’s odd and often somewhat abrupt topic changes and Natia getting used to the fact that no, Tanis didn’t really do the whole ‘joy’ thing, before the door in front of them opened and Bridgette stepped out.

“You’re both cleared.”

Tanis turned to Natia.

“Care to celebrate?”

Natia smiled at Tanis.

“I know where to find the cheapest good whiskey in this city.”

The three of them were sitting in a cab, Natia and Tanis with Zipper between them, when the small green boy looked at the tall new stranger who could read his best friend’s (older sister’s? Mom’s?) mind, with eyes the color of the blackest void, pierced only by a single star each.

“My name is Zipper,” he whispered.

In the end, they wind up on Tanis’ couch, because she needs to figure out how the fresh hell to have people over again. 

There’s only one glass in her cabinets she’d deign to drink whiskey out of, and Natia knows it (which actually winds up being more intriguing than unnerving for Tanis).

“I’m not above sharing a glass with a pretty girl,” Natia calls from the living room. 

“How do you know I’m pretty?”

“Zipper told me.”

Zipper, who had warmed up to Natia faster than he’d warmed up to anyone but Tanis, was currently sucking on a salt lick like it was a lollipop. The alien child was sitting cross legged on the floor, happily describing Tanis to Natia even though she could just read his mind anyway, and so Tanis took the one glass back to the living room, half-starting at the kid on her floor and the (truly lovely) woman on her couch.

It should have scared her, how domestic and how  _ normal _ this felt.

She finds out Natia has telekinesis when Zipper stretches his arm to grab the TV remote and Natia flicks it on before he can, which is honestly freakier than the mind reading.

“You’d make bank working at a haunted house,” Tanis comments, setting the glass down on the coffee table and pouring some of the whiskey into it. The label’s in Gaelic, which is one of the most hellish languages on this overheated marble and quite frankly just looking at it too long makes her head hurt, so Tanis tells Natia what Zipper’s favorite channel is and pointedly ignores it.

They wind up passing the glass back and forth over the child’s head, Zipper having happily sandwiched himself between them on the couch, content with his salt lick and favorite TV show.

It’s Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Tanis rubs a hand along the (her?) kid’s back, and Natia snickers at a particularly awful joke by Bloo.

...she can’t decide which scares her more: the fact that she thinks this should be terrifying, or the fact that it isn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

She’s been a Vindicator for two years, and arguing with alien diplomats is  _ still _ her full time job.

“At this point I’ve just given up trying to escape it,” she whines to Natia. They’ve both become ridiculously good friends in the last two years, and Tanis can’t even make herself date anyone else because Natia’s  _ right there _ , I mean, why would she need a girlfriend when she can just get hugs from Nati anyway?

“I think you’d be bored out of your mind doing anything else,” Natia says from her kitchen. Tanis is levitating herself, just enjoying the feeling of being utterly weightless as she sprawls in the air next to Natia’s dining room table, so it’s a little harder than usual to mentally project the thought-feeling equivalent of a pout, but she manages.

“Truly, you’re too kind,” Natia deadpans, and Tanis smiles.

Genuinely.

She’d been doing a lot more of that these past few months. It hadn’t gone unnoticed by Natia or Zipper, who hadn’t said a thing about it but they kept giving Tanis these  _ looks _ .

“Seriously, though. The war ended and I quit the space navy-”

“-because it took the lives of a lot of people who mattered to you,” Natia finishes, in that I’m-not-putting-up-with-your-bullshit tone she used whenever she was prying a bottle of booze out of Tanis’ hands (which was happening less as her smiles were coming more easily and more often so, win win). 

“Yes, but also so that arguing with aliens  _ was no longer my full time job _ .”

“But how would you be able to say you have thirty two space exes, five of whom are alien royalty?”

“I’m still banned from Jozar because Qualind sentenced me to death for breaking up with his daughter.”

“Bragging rights are bragging rights. Which one is his daughter?” Natia calls, cracking eggs into a pan. 

“The one who visited last month and ate all my ice cream. Lialind.”

“Ah.”

The fact that Tanis hasn’t dated for quite a while has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that all of her exes have both met and adored Natia, and even less to do with the fact that Natia is pretty and kind and  _ perfect _ , and Natia has basically become Mom #2 to Zipper and that has had  _ no bearing at all _ on Tanis’ decision.

She really doesn’t know how Natia hasn’t found out she’s got a massive crush on her.

“Eggs are done!”

Zipper, now about fourteen in human years, dashes into the dining room, because Natia is a very good cook (but Tanis is the better baker), and Tanis just slips into one of the chairs.

Natia sets a plate in front of Tanis and plants a kiss on her cheek.

“I knew as soon as you did, but I figured I’d wait until I was sure you wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Tanis feels her face go red as she yanks Natia down to kiss her back. Zipper yells something about watching his mothers make out while he’s eating, and Tanis realizes that she hasn’t had a choice about getting better since one night two years ago with Gaelic whiskey traded on her shitty couch.

Natia smiles, and Tanis’ stomach fills with butterflies. She tries to digest them. It doesn’t work.

Dammit. 


End file.
